Ian Evans and I have been friends since we met on holiday in Peru as long ago as Sunderland AFC were in the Premier League and Peter Reid was the manager. He lives in Ipswich and tries his best to support his local club*.
Just before lockdown, he and his wife joined another couple for a meal followed by a concert at the Ipswich Regal Theatre, part of a farewell tour, now curtailed, by the Irish band Clannad. Both friends were later found to be suffering from the wretched Covid-19 though they appear to have recovered and Ian and Jude have suffered no similar symptoms.
If that illustrates the random nature of the virus, Ian - a lawyer who served the judicial system for many years before retirement - has identified a potentially alarming if political side-effect .... I thought about it yesterday when taking a short walk in the park at the end of our street and one of two men in uniform, somewhat closer together than social distancing guidance regards as advisable, told my wife: "A maximum of 20 minutes, madame, because there are two of you...." While it was no great hardship to comply, the request did slightly unnerve me ...
Could Covid-19 kill democracy?
No doubt the automatic reaction to such a question will be a dismissive "no, of course not".
However, the possibility of such a danger was canvassed in a document published in 2010 by the Rockefeller Foundation in conjunction with Global Business Network, entitled Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development.
The document predicates four so-called "scenarios" as to how the future could evolve; they are described as a range of plausible possibilities. It is stressed that they are hypotheses not predictions, the purpose of which is to facilitate the rehearsal of future strategies so we are more prepared for the future.
One of the scenarios is called Lock Step, which is summarised as "a world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback".
The "scenario" is predicated upon a pandemic resulting in the spread of authoritarian regimes around the world.
Although it is premature to draw any firm conclusions, it appears that the authoritarian Chinese regime has had a degree of early success in controlling coronavirus in Wuchan, where it began.
If reports are to be believed life is beginning to return to normal in China as a result of the regime being able to completely lock down Wuchan.
Clearly China has not become an authoritarian regime in response to coronavirus; it was already authoritarian and was therefore able to take all and any actions it deemed necessary, without being subject to democratic control.
However, in democratic Hungary Victor Orban has in recent weeks arrogated to himself the power to rule by decree without any time limit, ostensibly to combat the coronavirus, thus permitting him to act without parliamentary approval.
In the USA Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, in their book How Democracies Die, postulate circumstances which may lead to the decline of liberal democracy. The thesis is that even in established democracies a war-like crisis could be used to justify dictatorial powers that are never returned.
It is reckoned that Trump was the target of this analysis.
You may say that this could not happen here in the UK.
However, in an article in The Times on 26 March 2020 and again last week on BBC Radio 4, Lord Sumption, a recently retired Supreme Court judge, warned that "the police have no power to enforce ministers’ preferences but only legal regulations which do not go anything like as far as the government’s guidance".
This was in the context of Derbyshire police trying to shame people "from using their undoubted right to travel to take exercise in the country". He branded the actions of the police as "disgraceful".
He said: "This is what a police state is like. It is a state in which the government can issue orders or express preferences with no legal authority and the police will enforce ministers’ wishes."
Any temptation to associate this view with the patently ludicrous conspiracy theories concerning coronavirus and 5g should be resisted.
This is an opinion that cannot be lightly rejected or disregarded.
Such is the legal standing and reputation of Lord Sumption that he was appointed direct to the Supreme Court from the bar without having previously held any judicial office; his was a unique appointment.
Accordingly we should beware and be alert, particularly at a time when Parliament has been suspended.
* Ian Evans on himself: Welsh born, bred and educated. Passionate Welsh rugby supporter but increasingly less passionate Ipswich Town supporter. After teaching law for three years, practised as a solicitor for 20 years before working in the court service for 27 years. Francophile and Hispanophile with a home in the French Atlantic Pyrenees near to the Spanish border. Eclectic music taste but a rock and roll folkie at heart.
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